Historic Welsh events online

People’s memories of watching television footage of some of the most significant events in Wales from 1950 – 2000, can now be viewed on a new website funded by Jisc for researchers, teachers and the general public.

Historical events such as the Aberfan disaster in 1966, the Miners’ Strike in 1984 and the Queen’s Coronation in 1953 are some of the important events to have been documented and placed on the website, created by Aberystwyth University as part of Jisc’s investment in opening up valuable content online.

As well as interviews with contributors and film footage the website, which is called Media and Memory in Wales, also includes maps, documents and photographs.

Professor Iwan Rhys Morus, from the Department of History and Welsh History and leading the project, explains: “The website will be a vital resource for academic researchers, professionals in the media and policy makers. You could easily spend hours searching through the stories that are collected here.If you are inspired to share your own memory of watching these events and of the impact of television on your life, you can contribute to People’s Collection Wales.”

The project was carried out by Aberystwyth University’s History and Welsh History Department with support from project partners Culturenet Cymru. Other partners are BBC Wales whose footage of the events provided an important spur for peoples’ memories, and the National Screen and Sound Archive at the National Library of Wales where the content will be archived.

More: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/stories/2012/05/tv.aspx

2012 top ten trends in academic libraries

Thanks to Andrew Brown at Swansea University for this interesting link:

A review of the trends and issues affecting academic libraries in higher education

http://crln.acrl.org/content/73/6/311.full

A new chapter – the Carnegie UK Trust report on public libraries

Have a look at Alyson Tyler’s very interesting blog post for a Welsh perspective: http://libalyson.wordpress.com/2012/06/21/a-new-chapter-the-carnegie-uk-trust-report-on-public-libraries/

Expanding access to research publications

The report of the Working Group chaired by Dame Janet Finch published on 18 June recommends a programme of action to enable more people to read and use the publications arising from research. Better, faster communication of research results will bring benefits for public services and for economic growth. It will also bring improved efficiency for researchers, and opportunities for more public engagement with research.

The internet has brought much better access to research results for members of the academic community. But the full benefits of the digital and online revolutions have yet to be realised, especially for business, the professions, and the general public. Many people have expressed the ambition for a worldwide open access regime. The key policy questions are how to promote that shift in an ordered way which promotes innovation and maximises the benefits while minimising the risks.

The report recommends actions which can be taken in the UK which would help to promote much greater and faster access, while recognising that research and publications are international. It envisages that several different channels for communicating research results will remain important over the next few years, but recommends a clear policy direction in the UK towards support for open access publishing. This means that publishers receive their revenues from authors rather than readers, and so research articles become freely accessible to everyone immediately upon publication.

At the same time, the report recommends extensions to current licensing arrangements in the higher education, health and other sectors; and it welcomes recent moves by publishers to provide access to the great majority of journals in public libraries.

The full report is available for downloading, along with an executive summary. http://www.researchinfonet.org/publish/finch/